As Venezuela crisis deepens, Chef José Andrés feeds earthquake survivors and search teams

By — Geoff Bennett Geoff Bennett By — Zeba Warsi Zeba Warsi By — Katie Marlow Katie Marlow Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/as-venezuela-crisis-deepens-chef-jose-andres-feeds-earthquake-survivors-and-search-teams Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio Venezuela's earthquake death toll has climbed to nearly 2,300 with thousands injured and tens of thousands still missing. Overwhelmed morgues, growing humanitarian needs, and mounting frustration over the pace of the response are compounding the crisis. Geoff Bennett spoke with Chef José Andrés, whose World Central Kitchen is on the ground delivering meals to survivors and first responders. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Geoff Bennett: More than a week after Venezuela's devastating earthquakes, today, there was a rare moment of hope. A security guard was pulled alive from the rubble after eight days trapped underground following a painstaking multinational rescue effort. But, for most, the crisis is only deepening. The official death toll has climbed to nearly 2,300, with thousands more injured and tens of thousands still unaccounted for. As rescue efforts continue, overwhelmed morgues, growing humanitarian needs, and mounting frustration over the pace of the response are compounding the crisis. Amid that effort is chef Jose Andres, whose organization, World Central Kitchen, is on the ground delivering meals to survivors and first responders. Chef Andres, welcome to the "News Hour." You have responded to disasters from Haiti and Puerto Rico, from Ukraine to Gaza. No two disasters are alike. What are you seeing on the ground there in Venezuela that the cameras simply can't capture? What's striking you the most? Jose Andres, Founder, World Central Kitchen: What is striking me the most right now is, with a window of maybe two, three days, where all the amazing search-and-rescue teams are working every single minute of the day, 24 hours a day, to try to find people that they may be alive under the rubble. Today, I was able -- we were able to be delivering food in many different places. And, today, at least, I was in five places where the teams will not give up, because they have hope that somebody may be alive under the rubble. And this is only five buildings, I know. I'm sure there's a few others. So what is amazing is that these people don't give up. Even when someone already one or two days ago said, maybe nobody's here, when you have dogs that they specialize in knowing if there's life, people alive, when those dogs bark and when you send not only one dog, but two, three, four other dogs from different teams, in that moment, everybody thinks it's worth to keep working, even is going to be hard work. And this is what is amazing. But it doesn't surprise me, because many of the teams, search-and-rescue,